


Meanwhile, back in meatspace

by rallamajoop



Series: Summers'son [5]
Category: Cable and Deadpool
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, First Times, M/M, teen awkwardness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:57:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rallamajoop/pseuds/rallamajoop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teen!Wade is totally down with doing the horizontal mambo with his new boyfriend. It's just that whole nudity part he's having a little trouble working up to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Breaking a bit from our previous theme of random things that may have happened in various AU versions of events, here we have a scene Nate and Wade will presumably arrive at eventually in more or less _any_ universe where they manage to get together.

The school grounds include an Olympic-sized pool and swimming lessons are a regular part of gym classes for every able-bodied student over the warmer months—except Wade. The official reason is to be found in a well-folded doctor's note stating that chlorine reacts with Wade's particular skin in undesirable ways which could, for example, lead to legal professionals wanting to have a strong word with school staff on the subject of duty of care. While it's not inconceivable that someone with a bona-fide medical degree may have written that note, the idea that a little pool water could do Wade's skin any worse damage is laughable, and so obviously so that there's probably more sympathy than genuine concern behind most of the gym teachers who've accepted it over the last few years. The real reason Wade won't swim has nothing to do with chlorine and everything to do with the fact that the accepted swimming uniform for boys tends to consist of a pair of boardshorts and no shirt. To Wade, who will go on wearing long sleeves well into each summer, showing that much skin in public does not bear considering.

Wade is, in his own words, _no-one's_ bitch; he can look another student right in the eye and dare them to tell him they have a problem with his face (and they'll be looking back, because Wade will very probably be fisting both hands in the front of their shirt while he says it) but below the neckline his confidence wavers. Given the choice between cooling his heels on the side of the pool for half an hour or spending the same period stuck between half a class who are staring and another half deliberately looking the other way, there's no contest, and if Nathan had imagined that a small thing like being Wade's boyfriend would grant him a pass on the subject, then by the time he's dated Wade a month he's having to admit just how wrong he'd been.

To Nathan's mind it makes no kind of sense that they should have waited nearly that long. He understands that you're not supposed to rush into these things—everyone need to be ready, to be sure—but like most rules conceived in reference to a model of relationships where no-one's telepathic (and, for that matter, where no-one is _Wade_ ) he doesn't really see how they apply to him. There can scarcely have been any other couple in history more sure they were on the same page with respect to taking things to the next level. The hours upon hours they've spent on the psychic version of the act prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that's only if all those months he'd wasted failing to realise he _liked_ being the subject of Wade's fantasies weren't wait enough in themselves. Back when they'd started this it had been obvious they'd naturally progress from that to the real thing within a week or two, assuming they could keep their hands off each other for thatlong. It had been obvious that the sheer animal need to get Nate in the nude would be more than enough to overcome any initial nerves Wade might have about the act.

Given the song and dance it had taken to convince Wade that anyone like Nate could ever want him in the first place, Nathan really should have known better.

Wade was always going to have some initial nerves about being naked in company—didn't everyone in this century?—so the first few times he'd felt Wade panic when Nathan's hands started playing with the edge of his shirt, he'd pulled back and slowed things down, waiting for Wade to catch up with him. But that twitchy sense of unease that stings like pins and needles whenever Nathan touches his mind never goes away no matter how long they make out for, or how many times they try. The time they spend together had quickly fallen into a pattern that was distressingly predictable: a few times a week they'd go home together, sooner or later end up on someone's bed or couch, which would continue until Scott or Al interrupted them or Wade panicked, and they'd separate, the both of them trying very hard to pretend they weren't painfully hard and desperate to do something about it. From there, one or the other would have to go home; Nathan would have to survive dinner with Scott and probably make some token attempt to get some homework done. Then and only then could he roll into bed, reach out for Wade's mind and finish what they'd started in each other's company that afternoon. It's always worth it, but the more times they go through it, the less satisfying Nathan finds it. He's well past ready for more.

_You know the scars don't bother me,_ he whispers one night, the both of them sated and sleepy enough that, for the moment, it doesn't matter so very much that the Wade under his fingers is imaginary; that the scars he's tracing on Wade's chest are an illusory mix of what he _thinks_ they might look like and what Wade _wants_ him to think. _You know how much I want to see you for real._

Wade ducks his head in that way reserved for Nathan's company alone, that means he's nervous and happy. In this moment, it doesn't matter so much that normally he'd react defensively when this topic comes up. _Yeah, I know. Just... a little longer, okay?_

Nathan knows he means it. He always means it, just as surely as Wade knows Nathan means _they don't bother me_. Communication is the least of all barriers in a relationship founded on a literal meeting of minds. But _knowing Nate's sure_ isn't quite the same as _knowing_ , and _knowing_ is another step yet diverged from _believing,_ and no matter how sure they both are that Nathan will be able to deal with his boyfriend's crater-marked body, what Wade believes, deep down, is that there's going to be a moment when Nathan first sees how bad it really is when he'll recoil in disgust. A flinch, a widening of the eyes, a split-second where the mental link between them splutters out and in again out—that's all it'll take for Wade to know the thought has crossed his mind. Everything since their relationship's awkward beginnings has been so impossibly perfect that Wade can't quite deal with that. Every time he says 'a little longer', he's really saying 'a little longer before I have to take that other shoe square in the face, kthx'.

The trouble with leaving it to unresolved sexual tension alone to catapult Wade over that last hurdle is that the tension _is_ getting resolved—psychically, without either of them ever laying a hand on the other. Far from acting as an intermediate option Nathan had envisaged, they've let themselves stall at that stage, while a variety of tensions arising from far less innocent sources build to breaking point. Sooner or later something has got to give and Nathan's worried that if it's not Wade it's going to be him, because no matter how many times he's promised himself he's not going to push, the image of what it would be like to pin Wade down telekinetically and strip him by force has begun to play a disturbingly consistent role in his mental landscape of late. It's enough to make him threaten to withhold psychic sex altogether until they've done the real thing—or it would be, if he could see either of them believing he'd go through with it. At the very least he's more or less decided that _next_ time he catches Wade hovering on that precipice between _feels so good_ and one of his nervous freakouts, he's sure as hell not going to bother easing him back from the edge.

Two months may not be that long, but they feel like forever.

So this is the background when they find themselves on the old couch opposite the TV one lazy afternoon, garish, machine-embroidered design already well on its way to embedding itself in the back of Nathan's neck, but still a comfortable hour or so left to them before Scott comes home to interrupt. Wade is perched over him with a knee planted on either side of his hips and a tongue exploring his mouth, but it's hard for Nathan to take so much interest in that when his shirt is hanging over the back of the couch and Wade's right hand is resting ever so tentatively on the skin under his collarbone. Wade's left is wedged in the gap between the cushions and the back of the couch, complicating his balance even before he began a cycle of changing his mind about what to do with the rest of his weight every few seconds, and what all _that_ does is to keep his fingers skittering over Nathan's skin at intervals so unpredictable as to be the stuff of pure distraction. Losing the shirt had been a gamble—he could hardly have been less subtle without getting YOU COULD JOIN ME ANY TIME tattooed across his chest, and it always leaves Wade swinging like a harmonograph pendulum between nerves and temptation on a good day and flying off the board in a tangle of furious indignation on a worse one. The odds that Wade will actually take the hint are barely worth the trouble, but right at the moment Nathan can't remember if they'd ever featured in his plans in the first place. Wade has two fingers sitting just in the hollow at the base of his neck and two more resting on the join that separates old flesh from new, and as easy as it ought to be to blame everything on the sensitive new flesh he hasn't been this aware of it since the day he was reborn. They've done so, so much more than this without ever sharing the same room, but now they're together this is exactly as much as it takes to drive him insane.

Nathan has his own hands resting just over the hollow of Wade's armpits, where the side seams of Wade's shirt meet the underarm seams in a neat little corner that's he's probably going to be able to recreate from memory a year from now after getting to know it in such maddeningly intimate detail. If he were to press down a little more firmly it would be the texture of Wade's skin he was learning through the thin fabric, but he doesn't dare; he hardly dares move his hands at all. Wade is right on the edge between what his body is telling him and what his insecurities are screaming at him and his nerves are contagious. Nathan hasn't even dared look into his mind in long minutes, not when he can read far too much in every spreading finger that hesitates over his skin (the edge of a nipple, the shape of a rib, the dip at the centre of his chest...). So he holds on to Wade like he might shatter any second, holds just as tightly on to the polite fiction that either of them have more than a fraction of their concentration involved in kissing anymore, when all Nathan can think is how much he wants to feel that mouth over where Wade's fingers are following the curve of muscle over his stomach.

The point is, yes, Nathan had been entirely guilty of stripping off his shirt _with intent_ but he could claim perfect ignorance of how they'd ever gotten from that to the part where Wade's hand brushes across the front of his pants and they both recoil as one.

Well, Wade recoils, but there's probably a better name for what Nathan does, similar though the motion may be.

Fortunately for all involved, Wade doesn't get far before he freezes with barely space between them to focus beyond the ends of their noses. With a look like a kid struck by the realisation that maybe there had been a really good reason why he was supposed to keep his hand out of that cookie jar, he offers, "Uh, is that-"

" _Yes_ ," Nathan hisses, because the alternative involves getting that same message across with a medley of mutant powers that are in no state to remember their manners.

He watches Wade's Adam's apple bob lightly down and up again before temptation wins.

The pressure on the second brush is slower, hardly more sure as the heel of Wade's hand leans into the front of his pants and rubs almost the full length along his erection before bumping lightly into the skin above the hem of his jeans.

Nathan unclenches his teeth and tries to breathe evenly, with debatable success. A small eternity goes by before Wade's hand comes back.

On the fourth stroke instead of lifting away it hesitates, then rubs a little more gently back down, and nevermind how excruciatingly aware Nathan had been of every move Wade had made so far, from there keeping count became swiftly impossible.

Wade goes on watching his face the whole time, looking for permission, guidance, reassurance—one of those things; Nathan has spent an unhealthy amount of time in his mind lately and he still couldn't have said which is the foremost, but he holds Wade's eye like everything in this moment hangs from that one point of connection, even as his focus slips around like a sailor on a greased deck. He doesn't look down at what Wade's doing to him. He feels like they couldn't stop themselves now if the whole world could be falling down around their ears. He feels like he could scare Wade away with one wrong move. The heat of Wade's hand hardly more than the whisper of a promise through all the layers of clothing between them and Nathan has never been more aware of anything in his whole life. He's pictured this so many times—with Wade's help and without—that he'd thought he'd known how it was supposed to go, and the reality has skipped so many crucial steps that he's navigating well beyond anywhere he knows how to get back from.

It goes on until he can't bear to stay silent a moment longer, whispers, "Wade..." and Wade starts, scrapes his palm on the button of Nathan's jeans and finally looks down. Nathan follows his gaze down at last to see Wade nudge the button a second time, thoughtful.

"Is it okay if...?" he starts.

"Wade," Nathan cuts in quickly, "you can assume whatever you ask from now on, the answer's going to be 'yes'."

Wade looks back up, not quite startled; catching Nathan's meaning at an angle, but for once in his life this may actually be Wade without a single smart remark left in his body. The moment is gone just as fast when he turns his head down and busies himself with the complex problem posed by Nathan's fly (the zipper in particular was not best designed to accommodate the tent trying to rise beneath it, and Wade is terribly careful as he pulls it down.) Faced with the white triangle of Nathan's briefs he pauses again, completely curled in on himself as he grips the upper hem with both hands and tugs it down, a little too hard and fast. Nathan winces, but is done in time to catch Wade distracting himself with the thought, _Whoa,_ weird _... does mine look like that from this angle?_

" _Wade,_ "Nathan warns, and gets a sheepish look for it and an even quieter, _I wasn't thinking_ bad- _weird,_ and then Wade's hand is closing over him, and there's a moment before Nathan can even process the sensation, he's so stunning it's really happening.

Wade's hand is rough and dry, Nathan feels it shaking every time Wade loosens its grip a little—which he does a lot, because it takes him several false starts before he figures out the right amount of pressure. None of that really matters though, because Nathan is increasingly aware that without those minor flaws this would be over in no time and that doesn't bear thinking about. What his mind settles on instead is that other first, not entirely unlike this one—an imaginary empty classroom where he'd leaned into Wade and whispered a handful of words that had changed the world.

"What ever made you think I could never want this?" he murmurs aloud, though his voice is on the raw side of seductive, he stumbles badly over 'never' and the result comes out somewhere between hypothetical and pleading. He watches Wade's shoulders shake silently in response. That's close to being the last complete thought he remembers having, save only one last attempt to make sense of how any years of dedicated solo practice could explain how _good_ Wade is at this. With those few false starts behind them it's almost like he knows Nathan's body as well as Nathan himself does—how much pressure to use, what rhythm, just when to tighten and twist on the upstroke—and if that was inexperience talking he didn't care or want to know because anything better and he'd have promised Wade his soul by now just as long as he kept his hand moving.

He comes—god, he comes with Wade's _hand on his cock_ , probably all over Wade's stupid shirt and his own chest, and he'd have watched it happen to the last if he could only make his spine cooperate—if he could have seen anything at _all_ after Wade kept on stroking him right through it, almost to the very end. After, he's aware of nothing so much as being pleasantly alone in his own head, for the first time since he can't remember when.

Wade slumps forward, weight barely supported on his knees and forearms and his head on Nathan's shoulder. Nathan curls a hand around the back of his neck and for a while they breathe together like that, neither moving. It's all too soon, though, that Wade's forcing himself back on to his haunches to tell Nathan something that's buzzing with incomprehensible urgency in the front of his mind. Any other time he'd know every word before Wade opens his mouth; right now he can't begin to imagine what could possibly be so important.

"Nate," Wade hisses, " _Nate_ , I just came too! Just from touching _you!_ Is that supposed to happen?"

It's far too much effort to make sense of what he's on about, not to mention patently stupid—they come together all the time, don't they? Why should... is as far as Nathan gets before the crucial difference dawns on him.

From the lowest depths of a very deep well of satisfied comfort, Nathan wakes himself up enough to swear and drop an arm over his eyes. No _wonder_ Wade had been so good.

"What?" Wade squeaks. "Nate, what?!"

It takes a fantastic amount of effort for Nathan to summon up the words, "I must have been projecting."

"Ohhh," says Wade. "I thought that was only for when we're doing the full mental monty—Nate," he adds, spotting Nathan's embarrassment, "Nate, listen to me, _this is not a bad thing._ "

Arm over his eyes, Nathan still has to turn his head away from Wade before he can get out the words, "It's possible you weren't the only one I was projecting to."

"You mean... maybe other people too... nearby?" Wade eyes go comically wide as the implications sink in. "Can't you, y'know, check if anyone just had a surprise wet dream starring you?"

Nathan tries, he really does, but those same powers he's struggled so long to turn down are suddenly demanding a fantastic effort to register the existence of any mind more than two feet away from the couch he's lying on.

"Maybe in a while," he concedes.

"So I wore you out a bit, huh?" says Wade. Nowhere in that phrase can Nathan detect the slightest hint of a joke.

He peaks out from under his arm and they share a grin. "You couldn't tell?"

Wade snickers a bit and looks down self-consciously at the damp patch on the front of his pants. There's something wrong about that, Nathan realises—something far more important than the minor logistics of getting Wade home today, but it takes him a little longer to remember what they've missed out of those detailed mental plans that went out the window somewhere earlier that afternoon.

"Wade," he says, catching him by the arm and startling the both of them, " _next_ time,"—next time being the one after he's made sure he wasn't projecting, figured out some extra precautions and just maybe had the most embarrassing conversation with Scott of his whole life—"next time, I get to touch you too, promise?"

Wade ducks his head one more time, and looks up again, shy. "Yeah, okay."

For a moment Nathan wants to press the point, but they both heard the promise in those words. It may not be much, but for the first time in what feels like forever, it's more than enough to believe in.


	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few hundred words worth of epilogue to wrap up the most glaring dangling plot-point leftover from the previous chapter.

On his way back from the bathroom Nathan very nearly walks right into his closed bedroom door, and hesitates for a moment, confused. He's positive he'd left it open, there's no reason Wade would have bothered to shut it, and not a single open window or stray draft in the house that might explain it. But on the other hand this is the 21st century, not the 39th where there'd be good reason to treat a discrepancy as minor as a closed door with suspicion, and besides, he has more important things on his mind. Like exactly how, even in the wake of recent progress, he's going to get Wade over that last hurdle of his nerves about being seen...  
  
This is exactly as far as he gets with that thought before he drops his hand from the doorknob and catches sight of the scene beyond, and everything whatsoever goes completely out of his head. The tableau holds like that, the both of them frozen to the spot, for several more seconds before Wade lets out a terrified squeak, drops all pretence of a casual lounge and grabs the corner of one of Nathan's sheets from behind him as if making to cover himself, which is so many kinds of not on that it catapults Nathan out of shock and into action on the spot.  
  
 _"Don't you dare!"_ he shouts. With telekinesis he grabs the offending hand and forces it back down to the bed, leaving Wade flat on his back and quite breathtakingly open when Nathan all but pounces on top of him. His hands are actually shaking as he lays them on Wade's skin – Wade who is lying _naked_ on _his bed_. Smaller somehow than what he'd pictured beneath all those baggy shirts and sweaters, Wade's ridiculous metabolism has stripped away all but the last ounce of fat anywhere on his body. He's covered in same fascinatingly irregular bumps and ridges that ripple over his face and hands, but Nathan had never pictured the way they'd spread to follow lines of perfectly structured muscle and bone like an abstract exercise in pencil shading; never guessed just how it would feel to have that much of Wade's bare skin shivering under his hands, firm and warm and beautifully unique in a way that brings out a possessive streak he'd hardly known he had before Wade. How Wade could ever have imagined he could look at all this with disgust – it beggars belief.  
  
"You..." he breathes, but he's got no idea how to finish that. He looks up from raking his eyes over that body to find Wade's eyes gone wider than he's ever seen them before, as much stunned as turned on; Nathan is far from the only one here feeling a little breathless.  
  
"Good surprise?" Wade squeaks, and Nathan still has no idea how to finish his last statement let alone how he could possible do the answer to that question the justice it deserves. He settles for grinning in a manner that makes Wade swallow and his pupils dilate.  
  
"I hope you're comfortable," says Nathan, stripping his own shirt off over his head, "because we're going to be here _a while_."  
  
And that, of course, is the exact moment that Scott's car pulls up outside, home from work early for the first and only time in the last two months, which Nathan handles by tumbling clean off the bed with Wade and a small avalanche of bedclothes on top of him.  
  
"How is this my life now?" he groans from the floor.  
  
Wade curses and digs for his pants.


End file.
